PROTECTORS: the history of a meandering webcomic (Patreon)

I was the type of kid who’d turn any open-ended school assignment into an excuse to draw comics. Naturally, this practice extended into my community college years. In late 2013, I took a course that was specifically about comics, and for the first time I didn’t have to timidly ask if I could do my project as a comic book, because that was the whole dang point! We were specifically assigned to come up with our own original comic.

Admittedly, there might have been some confusion, since everyone else in class turned in a pitch, while I turned in forty-seven fully inked pages.

Much like my first webcomic, Civil City, Protectors was built off story ideas I'd had many years prior. Civil City sprang from my elementary school obsession with superheroes, and Protectors sprang from my middle school obsession with anime. I looked through my old drawings of cool teens with swords and said, “I’m gonna make a comic about cool teens with swords.” Yes, I said it out loud. Everyone applauded.

I've decided to dedicate the lion's share of this post to summarizing the comic. That way you won't have to actually read it!

The first chapter (which I called "Book 1" to be fancy) introduces the three main characters: Jed, Katie, and Ivy. Jed is hot-headed, but can act as the voice of reason when he needs to. Katie is sensitive and good-natured, if a little insecure. Ivy is grumpy and cynical, but is a secret softy. (She’s more of a supporting character in Book 1, but quickly works her way up to protagonist after that.)

Book 1 begins with Jed and Katie, a pair of high school jocks, being gifted magical shape-changing weapons by a mysterious, muscular wizard. He claims they’re chosen ones, destined to fight monsters. This is revealed to be a mistake:

So, what kind of monsters are these fools fighting? According to the Wizard, human souls have been pulled back to Earth from the afterlife, a tumultuous process that turns them into feral beasts called Relivings. But if these teens stab ‘em up good, the souls will return from whence they came.

Initially, Katie is enthusiastic about the newfound responsibility, while Jed is annoyed by it. Halfway through Book 1, the Wizard realizes his mistake and takes back their weapons, which btw are called "Spirit Catalysts". Katie spirals into a depression, prompting Jed to get over himself and help motivate her. They decide to fight the Relivings without the Catalysts, ‘cause it’s the right thing to do regardless of “chosen one” status. They enlist Ivy, a young wizard in training, to help battle the big monster that shows up at the end. Also, the nameless wizard has a change of heart and gives back their cool weapons. Kind of a cop-out, but I wanted him to have his own character arc, to humanize him. Whether it worked is up for debate.

That’s the gist of Protectors: Entry Point. It’s not a good comic, but it was a step in the right direction. Civil City was nearly a year old at that point, and a mess. Entry Point had a sense of structure that my previous work lacked, so I’m willing to give myself credit for progress. Sure does look like butt, though.

Book 1 highlights:

So that was it. A simple little story with a beginning, middle, and end. I could’ve left it at that. Then I took an illustration class, where the final project was to draw a five-page comic. And, because I am the way I am, I asked the professor, “Can I make a forty-eight page comic instead?”

Books 1 and 2 were each drawn in about a month, which is why they (individually) have fairly consistent visual styles. Entry Point was inked with pens and a big chisel-tip sharpie for the spot blacks, while Fear Itself was inked with a sable hair brush I’d souped up with duct tape and a pencil grip. It's only when I'm working long-term that I get bored and experiment with style mid-chapter (as we'll see later). These two chapters are also the most focused, story-telling wise. I was handing them in for a grade, the least I could do was wrap up the plot threads.

That said, they can be a rough read. For one thing, you can tell I was a 19-year-old who'd just learned about feminism from the great academic minds of tumblr dot com, and was clumsily trying to incorporate my newfound revelations. Fear Itself had a lot of characters talking about how smart Katie is--telling, not showing. I didn’t wanna admit to making the blonde kind of a dumbass and the Asian one super smart, but I didn’t wanna change the characters, so I just had ‘em verbally Protest Too Much. I know it’s cringe to call things cringe, but it’s pretty cringe.

Book 2 starts out with Katie and Ivy fighting monsters while Jed is at the hospital, recovering from an injury. By the way, I did not know who Bernie Sanders was when I drew this:

Jed is visited by a talking Reliving called Nightmeister, who challenges the protagonists to a duel. After a quick fight at the local cemetery, Nightmeister traps Jed, Katie, and Ivy in the nightmare realm, where their worst dreams become reality. (It's later revealed that when souls are pulled from the afterlife, they travel through the nightmare realm, which is what turns them into Relivings.) Those scenes are in full color! Finding excuses to include color in Protectors without having to commit to coloring the whole thing became a staple of the franchise.

Fun fact: I am scared of spiders, and drawing this scene made me physically uncomfortable.

Our heroes only manage to escape by confronting and being open about their deepest anxieties. I still sort of like this climax, though I wish I’d done a better job foreshadowing their respective fears in the first act.

As mentioned, I tried to tell a more-or-less contained story. But I knew I wanted to continue the comic, so I ended with a hook, a revelation that introduced new conflict into the mythos. Nightmeister lets the kids know that when Relivings are killed with the Spirit Catalysts, the souls don’t return to the afterlife; they’re destroyed completely.

Thus wraps the second time I made a ~50 page comic in a month even though nobody asked me to. You’d think someone with my level of enthusiasm for the craft would be better at it. (Not to get all self-deprecating, but there are folks who think about things that aren't comics, and they can make better comics than me, a person who thinks about comics all the comics. I mean time.)

Book 2 highlights:

Civil City was over a year old and losing steam. I was pretty hyped about Protectors, so I put CC on the back burner. (Protectors would later be back-burnered to make room for a different CC.) Books 1 and 2 had been made in shorts bursts, and shoved onto the internet all at once. Book 3 was the first to have a weekly update schedule, leading to wildly inconsistent art and bonkers story choices. Things get more complicated from here, so buckle up.

Sight and Sound is probably my favorite of the chapter titles. It’s alliterative and vaguely poetic, then you read the comic and find out it’s also SEXY.

At one point I thought Protectors would be a trilogy. I had this weird idea of ending it with a zombie attack, and the zombies would fight the Relivings, so it’d be a body vs. soul kind of thing? I don't know the details, but if I had decided to make that the finale, I probably would’ve finished it. Imagine, a guy like me, actually finishing a long-form webcomic. Incredible.

Anyway, in Book 3, a character who briefly appeared in Book 2 becomes an actual protagonist! Say hello to Karen.

At the start of Book 3, Jed, Katie, and Ivy are in their senior year of high school, and keep talking about college and their futures and stuff. (It will become apparent why this is funny.) Trying to avoid the ethical dilemma of destroying souls, Jed and Katie use their Catalysts non-lethally, and let Ivy use her magic to banish the souls to the afterlife. Of course, this isn't always possible.

Also, there’s obvious romantic tension between Katie and Ivy. They masterfully avoid confronting it, but the vibe is that they’re days away from kissin'.

Ivy develops a soul-banishing spell that can be bound to weapons, so the other two can fight monsters without destroying souls. Katie suggests binding the spell to her Spirit Catalyst, so Ivy gives it a whirl, and all hell breaks loose. Katie is suddenly transformed into a silent figure with golden armor. She leaves and starts killing Relivings with no apparent care for what happens to the souls.

Katie’s sister Karen finds an old book that explains the history of the Spirit Catalysts. Centuries ago, wizards bound two-hundred souls into two “supersouls,” which inhabited two warriors and lent them great power. Because of a greedy king and a deceitful wizard (who is suspiciously similar to the guy from Book 1), the supersouls were stripped from the warriors and turned into controllable objects.

Ivy’s spell messed with Catalyst Gold Version, returning it to its original state, and it took control of Katie. Jed, Ivy, and Karen decide to confront the Wizard about it, since he seems to be connected somehow. Ivy challenges him to a fight over it, and gets her ass kicked. We also get a fun retcon where the prophecy from Book 1 is revealed to be fake, which means those "real chosen ones" were just weird LARPers I guess?

That scoundrel of a wizard chucks Jed's Catalyst Silver Version into the Spirit Gate (from which Relivings emerge via the nightmare realm), just to see what would happen. The Catalyst is forced back out, and the supersoul becomes one big Reliving with the power of one-hundred. This is all making sense so far, right????

Armored Katie shows up to fight the big boy, and gets stabbed through the gut with big boy's big sword, which also pierces the Spirit Gate. There's an explosion. Ivy revenge-kills the big boy. The late Katie wakes up in a place between Earth and the afterlife, where these lil guys explain all the things that just blew up: the Spirit Catalysts, the Spirit Gate, and the afterlife itself. There are...consequences.

Remember how I toyed with the idea of a zombie apocalypse? Well, it’s not zombies, but

Katie appears to the others as a ghost and fills them in. Since the circumstances of her death meant her soul never left her body, she can be brought back to life. But it'll require an amount of magical energy they can only get by syphoning the Wizard’s power source. Ivy promises to bring her back. Then I pull this shit:

Four years. That's two One Piece time skips.

Book 3 highlights:

Protectors started out as a supernatural urban fantasy about teens fighting monsters. But I guess I wanted to write about adults in a post-apocalyptic setting, and no one was around to stop me. Hold onto your cheeks, folks.

So it’s four years later. Jed, Ivy, and Karen are part of a group that explores the wasteland, banishing Relivings and moving refugees to safe zones. Ivy takes a leadership position, and has become a powerful wizard. Jed is dating Karen, which is probably a mistake. Karen has shaved the sides of her head, because 2010s. Katie is in the between world, keeping the banished souls secure and trying to get a meeting with whoever’s in charge (God?) to talk about getting a new afterlife.

Also, some new characters are introduced!

Ray: The mechanic. He fixes cars, sets up generators, and generally keeps things running smoothly. A cheerful, almost Santa-like figure.

Jill: The doctor. She is trying so, so hard to keep the protagonists from getting themselves killed, and frankly she’s exhausted.

Mackey: He actually appeared in Books 1 and 2 as a high school teacher. You kind of get the vibe he was fully prepared for the apocalypse long before it happened.

Madison: Ivy's apprentice in wizardry. Canonically trans. She’s level-headed, in direct contrast to Karen.

Eric and Freida: Eric is a chill dude, though not the most approachable. Long before meeting the others, he'd been looking after Frieda, who was orphaned during the apocalypse.

That’s right, apocalypse orphans! Thousands dead! What a logical tone shift for this comic to make!!!

The bulk of this chapter shows the events of a single day. Karen leads the new characters on a monster hunt, while Jed and Ivy are on a hunt of their own: Ivy has located the Wizard, and fully plans to risk her life trying to get Katie back. Karen’s confidence is on full display as she duels a humanoid Reliving inspired by David Bowie in Labyrinth. Katie finally gets an appointment with the god of the planet, who’s referred to as the “Eternal Observer.” I later changed it to “Great Observer” but never went back and fixed it. lol

Ivy fights the Wizard, and forces him to retreat. Karen’s mission goes wrong quickly, as Eric is killed and Mackey is gravely injured. Katie meets the Beyoncé-inspired Observer, who is indifferent to her request.

Although this chapter is where things truly go off the rails, there’s one thing I believe brought some narrative cohesion: I finally put thought into the magic system. The early chapters featured very generic witchcraft stuff, with candles and prayer beads and rituals spoken in Probably Latin. Eventually I thought to tie magic to concepts that were already important to the story. Namely, the afterlife.

As the Wizard retreats, Ivy steals half of his energy and absorbs it into her own power source, which she can bust open to bring Katie back. But Ivy's magic came from the afterlife, which got wrecked four years ago. Even a little stored magic is enough to continually renew a wizard's power, but if she destroys her source completely, she'll be unable to do magic ever again. She goes through with it anyway, because she fell in love with a cute blonde.

By the time Jed, Katie, and Ivy head back to base together, Mackey’s died on the operating table and Karen’s run off, demoralized by her failure. The Observer, after a classic change of heart, shows up and tells Katie about a way to get a new afterlife. Naturally, it involves winning an intergalactic martial arts tournament. Since Katie only just got back, Jed volunteers to go in her place.

And that’s War Journal. Y’know, I like post-apocalyptic settings, and I wouldn’t mind writing another someday. But for the love of gosh, don’t let me turn whatever comic I happen to be working on into that kind of story ever again. If I drop an apocalypse into Clown Corps just ‘cause I got bored, it wouldn’t be cool. Okay, it’d be a little cool, but it wouldn’t be good! Unless?

Book 4 highlights:

At this point in the timeline I was already sketching my first clowns, but it would be a while before I launched any clown-based comics. In the meantime, I had to start Book 5 of Protectors. Spoilers: I did not finish Book 5 of Protectors.

The biggest change here is that I started making the comic completely digitally. There was a lot of experimentation with fonts, inks, colors, and everything else. By the end of the run, I’d only be posting pages once every few months, so consecutive updates would look completely different from each other. The last batch of pages, 38-43, were posted just before I started chapter three of Clown Corps.

Overworld Knight begins with the Observer going to a swamp planet to pick up Jed, who'd been training with a hermit martial arts master. (Oh, if it wasn’t clear, there’s aliens now. The urban fantasy became post-apocalyptic, and somehow ended up sci-fi. What a ride.)

Training for a few months must have helped Jed’s mental health, because he’s a lot less angry this chapter. Mostly 'cause he’s acting as a comic foil to the Great Observer (to whom he gives the nickname "Grace"). It’s like when the Ropers left Three’s Company to star in The Ropers. Remember The Ropers? Of course you do, and it’s exactly like that.

So Jed’s competing in a tournament full of space aliens to get his hands on some cosmic real estate. Grace managed to find Catalyst Silver Version somewhere in timespace, and attaches the power to Jed via tattoo.

The non-Jed competitor given the most attention is Pera Flaronus, who is said to have brought her planet to ruins shortly after becoming its queen. (Only now, years later, do I consider the phrase "pera deez nuts.") Also she's got some sexual tension with Jed, since he's a Captain Kirk type who naturally attracts alien girls. Tragic but true.

Back on Earth: Ivy, Katie, Madison, and Frieda travel to Muros, a safe zone protected by wizards, where a small community thrives. The main goals are to install Madison as head wizard in place of Ivy, and to get Freida (who’s still mourning Eric) adjusted to living there. Also to get Katie some pants, since she hasn't owned a pair in 4+ years.

And the third plotline is the Dark Karen arc. She tracks down Evil Bowie, who had previously offered her power. He starts teaching her nightmare magic, the power of which is drawn from the nightmare realm, as opposed to Ivy and Madison's heaven magic.

So, that’s the stuff I set up before I stopped. Now that I’ve admitted to myself I won’t be finishing the comic, I might as well tell you what I had in mind for the rest of the story. But first, Book 5 highlights:

And here's the last official page of Protectors I ever made:

Some say she's still rolling her eyes to this day.

So the thing about Jed in this chapter is he kind of reverts to the positive aspects of his high school self. He was a popular, outgoing guy. Basically every ass he kicks in the tournament becomes the ass of a new friend. He even gets to know Pera better, learning her backstory: she was the youngest sibling, and least likely to inherit the throne, so she dedicated herself to martial arts. When Pera’s whole family died, she was put in charge with no political experience. After a series of bad happenstances, the planet was a wreck and everyone blamed her. She entered the tournament to get a replacement world for the one she broke.

On Earth, Madison builds confidence, Katie handles new recruits for monster fightin’, and Ivy copes with being magicless by looking after Frieda and the other schoolkids. Over time,
Katie and Ivy become sorta parental figures to Frieda.

Meanwhile, Karen’s using nightmare magic to tame Relivings. The scary ones, not the sexy ones. In fact, once she’s got the cool powers, she offs Dark Bowie, since she never actually liked the guy.

In space, Jed fights Sep Calkhan, who’s obviously a bad guy. Jed loses, and even after the fight’s over, Sep nearly kills him. Luckily Jed has made friends with basically everyone there, and they’ve got his back.

Dramatically speaking, it makes sense for the final battle to be Pera vs. Sep, because it turns out Sep is the one who killed Pera’s family and orchestrated the destruction of her planet. What a dick! Pera's whole deal is that she's mastered hundreds of different martial arts styles, but she confides in Jed that she was developing a style of her own. At Jed's encouragement, she uses this style to kick Sep's ass, which does not become the ass of a new friend.

Grace has always caught flak from other celestial beings. She got the name "Observer" because she inherited her planet but never created anything herself. Out of bitterness, she never tried to. Although Jed couldn’t secure a new afterlife, the experience inspires Grace to get over her issues and build something from scratch.

That’s basically what would've happened in Book 5. You might’ve noticed, it’s not much of an ending. If only I had some ideas for a hypothetical Book 6 OH WAIT

See, back in Book 4, while traversing dimensions, Katie met another version of herself.

This scene was a gift to myself I was never able to open. This scene gave me a free pass to screw with genre once again and get into some shenanigans.

Book 6, Afterlife Earth, would follow two timelines. One would pick up after the events of Overworld Knight, business as usual. The other would start at the moment in Sight and Sound where Ivy does magic on the gold Catalyst. But this time, instead of turning Katie into a Kamen Rider, it doesn't do anything. They call it a loss, and proceed to use regular swords enchanted with Ivy's banishing spell, effectively retiring the Catalysts.

The rest of that timeline's plot is about Jed, Katie, and Ivy living out their last year of high school and prepping for prom and graduation. Jed and Katie plan to go to a local college so they can stay where the monsters are, but since they can now do banishing spells without Ivy's help, she's free to go to any of the fancy out-of-state schools she's been accepted to. This brings conflict, because lesbians.

Back in the apocalypse timeline, Karen roams the land with a pack of Relivings under her command. She hasn't turned evil, but there's maybe a scene of her intimidating some Fallout-style wasteland thugs. She's got an edge, y'know? But then she finds something that scares the edge right out of her, and she heads back to Muros for help. We'll get to that later.

Ivy is basically a full-time schoolteacher now, but in her free hours she starts developing a type of magic that doesn't rely on the afterlife or the nightmare realm. This would pull renewable power directly from planet Earth.

Katie goes out hunting with Jed and the Book 4 crew, plus those weirdo LARPers who got retconned out of be being chosen ones. Now that I think of it, they did show up in Book 5:

The timelines intersect just once, when the two Katies meet each other in a dream. They have a nice little talk, and the one who suffered through the end of the world comforts the 18-year-old who's dealing with drama at school.

Since non-apocalypse Katie no longer needs her Catalyst, she gives it to grown-up Katie, who wakes up with a tattoo similar to Jed's. For the first time in about five years, both of them have their signature weapons back.

There's some tension between Katie and Jed over his relationship with Karen (although Karen more-or-less broke up with him via journal entry when she left.) Since Katie's got Gold Version back, she and Jed have a friendly spar like the good ol' days. It escalates as they release their frustrations, to the point where the Catalysts form full suits of armor and they're knocking over buildings and shit. They fight until they're too tired to be mad anymore, and the scene ends with two best friends laughing, surrounded by rubble.

We get some scenes of Grace putting in the work to build a new afterlife. Pera shows up and donates some scrap building material from her old, busted planet. The Wizard arrives and offers the remaining half of his magical power (which is still a lot, since he'd been building it up for centuries). Fighting against Ivy put things in perspective for him, since she was willing to die for something, and he'd kept himself alive for nothing. He decides he's ready to let his soul be at peace.

Karen shows up to Muros with her horrifying crew, and with a dire warning. I haven't completely worked out what she found, but I'm thinking along the lines of an artificial Spirit Gate? Something Dark Bowie or someone else put into motion. It could create new monsters from pure nightmare, without the use of human souls. Meaning the planet would be overrun by unlimited Relivings, and even the safe zones wouldn't be safe.

Meanwhile, the climax of the non-pocalypse timeline probably takes place at prom. And to be honest, I never decided how things would wrap up. I initially thought Katie and Ivy wouldn't be able to make it work, to emphasize the silver lining of them being happy in the apocalypse timeline. But the idea that thousands, if not millions of people had to die in order for these two to kiss is a bummer, so I dunno. Maybe I need a THIRD TIMELINE????

Anyway, Katie would definitely get her college haircut, lest we have a paradox on our hands.

Oh shoot I just had an idea. Maybe after the prom scene, the audience THINKS Katie and Ivy don't get together, we THINK Ivy's left town, but then there's a sorta callback to this scene:

Except it goes like this:

Oh my gosh I fixed the timeline. The moral isn't about silver linings, it's about shaping your own destiny! WHICH CIRCLES BACK TO THE THEME OF THE FIRST CHAPTER!! I'M A GENIUS WHY DID I EVER STOP MAKING THIS COMIC

So, in apocalypse world. Ivy struggles to get her earth magic up and running before the big fight, so Katie convinces her to stay behind so Frieda isn't orphaned a third time. (We already know Ivy's a badass from the Wizard fight, so I think it's okay if she sits this one out. Also it'll give Madison a chance to prove herself.)

There's some other calm-before-the-storm scenes. Karen in particular has to make good with some people. She hadn't even known Katie was back on Earth, so there's some tears to be shed there. I'm not sure if Karen and Jed should get back together. I don't think they're a very good couple outside the context of being there for each other at the end of the world, but it looks like that's about to happen again, so maybe there's a chance?

When it's time, a bus full of fighters head to the Nightmare Gate, which is what I just decided to call it. I imagine a Sora Fights One-Thousand Heartless situation, and maybe there's also a huge boss battle that looks like Dark Bowie but with extra arms or whatever. Since these Relivings don't have souls, Jed and Katie can fight with their Catalysts guilt-free. And like, if I can figure out a way for them to combine their power into some sort of Megazord, I wouldn't not do that. Everyone else is fighting their best, plus Karen's pitting her Relivings against the enemy ones like it's Pokemon. There sure are a lot of pop culture references in this climax.

The point of this battle is that they know it's impossible, but they fight anyway, 'cause there's people they have to protect. Because they're protectors. And that's how we justify the comic's dorky title.

Now, there's an idea I had a long time ago for how this fight goes, but I don't know if I would've had a pera deez nuts big enough to go through with it. Basically, we watch all our favorite characters die, one-by-one. IT TURNS OUT FINE, but it's brutal.

They wake up in a beautiful field somewhere, where Grace explains that they've arrived on the world she's created. But it's not the afterlife. It's a fresh start. The planet Earth will be the new location of the afterlife, where souls will rest, and the new world will belong to the living. (Until everything's officially set up, people who die on Earth will pop over to the new world. Lucky break!)

Ivy and Frieda are already there. While the others were gone, Grace recruited Ivy for her earth magic research, which was instrumental in connecting the two worlds without them being anchored to the nightmare realm. So, no more Relivings. And Ivy can freely cast earth magic, because it now uses the same methods as heaven magic. Because they're the same thing now.

I started this comic almost a decade ago, and I just now came up with that punchline. I really needed this closure, y'all. I'm tearing up.

So, eventually the living people on Earth will be brought over, Reliving souls will find rest, and the Relivings without souls will die out (since they can no longer be powered by the nightmare realm). In the meantime, our heroes have this whole new world to explore. And I'd want the comic to end on an optimistic note, so there isn't even a joke about how "humanity is gonna mess this one up too" or "the afterlife is exactly like Earth, must be HELL!" Naw, it's just some exhausted friends with unlimited possibilities ahead of them.

The longer the story I write, and the bigger the scale, the more I want the status quo to be changed by the end. In the Civil City history post, I talked about how the entire premise of the comic would have been subverted in the end, at least in the city where it was set. The first Bishop Case was a shorter story with a smaller scale, so its low-key ending (two girls sitting at lunch together) was a significant change from the status quo (one girl sitting at lunch alone). The size of the question determines the size of the answer. Becky Bishop was faced with the question: what if a teen detective's sleuthing made her unpopular? The question of Civil City was: what if there were enough superheroes to go around? And Protectors asked the question: HEY WHAT IF THE HUMAN SOUL WAS REAL AND ALSO TRIED TO KILL YOU?????

Protectors has 345 finished pages. Considering how many drastic changes in scale it went through, that's pretty short. It's a story where teens get froyo at the mall, but It's also a story where a man meets God and borrows her dress during an intergalactic martial arts tournament. As of writing this, I'm nearly finished drawing the 345th page of Clown Corps. (I didn't time this out on purpose, it's just a buckwild coincidence.) Same amount of pages, but those clowns ain't close to leaving their city, let alone going to space. (Not until the sequel, anyway.) The point is: since the story of Protectors exists on such a bonkers scale, I simply couldn't see myself giving it a "back to normal" ending.

(Technically I never gave it any ending tee-hee-hee.)

The way I think about plotting stories is pretty simple. The plot is the process of turning a character at the beginning of the story into the character at the end of the story.

In Book 2, the nightmare realm revealed Katie's fear of not being seen as in individual worthy of love. When she lost her petty friends on the cheerleading team, it shattered her. Then she had to survive four years apart from the people she actually loved. If she thought they'd given up on her, she wouldn't have worked so hard to inquire about a new afterlife, and Grace would have simply observed humanity's demise.

Jed started the story with two hobbies: football, and treating women as objects. His "nightmare" was not being in control. If he hadn't become friends with Katie and learned to manage his masculine pride, he wouldn't have been able to follow Ivy's leadership, or inspire Grace to create. And if he'd treated Pera as just a hot babe instead of encouraging her to embrace what made her unique, she wouldn't have won the tournament and helped Grace get the new world built.

Ivy was introduced as being mean and uncaring. The nightmare realm established her fear of getting close to people. If she hadn't cared so much about Katie, she wouldn't have sacrificed her heaven magic, or inspired the Wizard to give up his own. If she wasn't driven to protect Frieda, she wouldn't have developed earth magic, which was critical in designating a new afterlife and ending the Reliving curse for good.

I suppose if there's a theme for the entire story, it's: face your fears, shape your own destiny.

I took an improvisational approach to writing Protectors, if that wasn't obvious. Discovering what the story was about the whole time is a pretty satisfying way of saying goodbye to it. These characters mean a lot to me, more than the ones from Civil City. Even the clowns have yet to carve as big a piece out of my heart (although, to be fair, they don't have the benefit of nostalgia).

Protectors was always a story about life and death, but it rarely presented death as being "final." Maybe leaving the story unfinished is appropriate. It died, but it never ended. It's over, but can't really die. It's an embarrassing mess of a comic and I don't really want anybody looking at it, but it was a big part of my development as an artist and writer, and I'm never gonna forget it.